When I was growing up, my mom and dad had this fall ritual of preserving fruit for the winter. They dutifully peeled, prepared, and bottled all manner produce using a huge pressure cooker. I remember rows of pears in glass bottles lining the shelves in a space under the basement stairs, forcing me to find another spot for my hideout.
I’ve come to think of my photo collection in much the same way, a process driven by the seasons, and winter seems the perfect time to assess and prepare all those pixels for the busy times ahead.
Nothing much happens in Winter, after all, except Lunar New Year and maybe a vacation. It’s the lull in photo ops between New Year’s and the family season in Spring when everyone reunites for Easter, Passover, festivals, weddings, graduation, and the like. Making Winter the perfect time to gather and assess the mess of photos you took last year, before you start adding more.
Or, this might be good timing to tackle the next step of a plan already in motion. But whether you are starting out fresh or taking the next steps in an ongoing process, Winter is a fine time to focus on your photo collection.
Today, let’s assume you’re starting from scratch.
Hunting for your photos
First off, you have to tackle the task with the right expectations. Personally, I think digital organizing is soooooooo much easier than cleaning out a closet, but I know people find it overwhelming. The thing is that you have to acknowledge that most photo messes are the result of decades’ neglect and won’t get resolved overnight. And that’s just fine because photo organizing can be broken up into several mini-tasks.
Just start.
You can’t really do anything serious until you find where all your photos and videos live. And I mean ALL of them.
The first 10 years of this millennium were pretty much the Wild West for digital photography. For many of us it’s a hodgepodge of mediums that includes the last gasp of film and double prints, early digital camera files, snaps from mobile phones, homemade CD’s, online gallery collections like Shutterfly and Flickr, camcorder tapes, camera cards, and random folders full of pictures on computers.
Even the most conscientious of us likely have copies of copies in various hard drives and drawers.
It’s time to make sense of it all.
Inventory all possible image locations
Visit each one for useable/accessible pictures
Collect/download/copy/scan/bookmark/import everything into one handy digital workspace - generally a large dedicated hard drive. More on this in the next step.
This is essential. Even if this is all you get done for now, it’s a milestone you can be proud of. Everything in one place so you can take the next step with confidence.
Build a Game Plan
To come up with a strategy you need to start at the end. Think about what you want your photo collection to look like. Traditional photo organizing calls for dated photos in a folder-based calendar hierarchy on your Mac or PC. But the reality is once you get into the 20k+ realm of collections, you want some kind of photo management database to help with that organization and to provide user-friendly tools for editing, sharing, and overall image management for a collection that will be growing every year.
The key thing is that you are committing to a process/app that you’ll likely be using for at least a few years, and it should support features you want, the devices you own, and the user experience you prefer. This may be a good time to consult with a professional photo manager to review current options.
In this case, we’ll assume you use Apple Photos, but the principles are the same with almost every photo management app. You’ll have every image - photos and videos - in one place from the dawn of (your) time to today.
But to get to that one big collection you need to do some prioritization. Here’s why.
Back in the last step you ended up collecting everything. Some of those images are already digital and easy to move to a hard drive, but many aren’t. You may need scanning and digital conversions. You may have several versions of old iPhoto libraries or photos in outdated file formats. This is the messy part, but often the most important because they involve older images that have become priceless over time. Super 8 film and camcorder tapes with audio are treasures.
The key takeaway here is that some media is deteriorating and needs to be converted or copied as soon as possible. Generally, these are:
Movie film
Camcorder, video, & audio tape
Home made CD’s & DVD’s
Commercial CD’s & DVD’s
Slide Film
Unless you have the experience and equipment to properly handle the task, you should use a professional service. Here again, a photo manager can guide you through the process in the most efficient way possible.
Scanning prints and copying files or libraries are much more accessible tasks, and if you outsource the conversions, can be done while the outsourced content is being handled.
Next Steps
Depending on the size of your project and how much catch-up there is to do, just getting all your images found, inventoried, and collected may be your whole winter’s project. Which is fine. It’s the foundation for a proper photo collection; the material from which your legacy and ongoing library will be built.
You may also face the reality that your collection won’t get your full attention again for a while. Which is why it’s essential that you fully document the status in as much detail as possible.
After you’ve been immersed in your photos for a few weeks, it’s easy to believe that you’ll remember where you are and what you’ve done. But hard drives and CD’s and boxes of video tapes are anonymous by themselves, and the last thing you want to do is open up the drives or skim through a video just to figure out what’s what if it’s months from now.
You may also get to a point where you decide to outsource some or all of the project to a professional. If so, providing them with a clear roadmap of what you’re handing them will save them time and be easier on your budget.
If you are faced with a hunt & gather project to get your photo collection on the road to completion, take advantage of your off-season - whenever it is - to immerse yourself in the project. When your life is busier, it’s easy to get sidetracked. And once you get everything in one place you can move on to the fun stuff.
For right now, focus on these things:
Collect all your photos and videos in one safe place
Prioritize converting/copying images on any deteriorating media
Document and label media as you go to avoid confusion
Keep a record of tasks completed and planned next steps any time you set the project aside.
Then go out and take more photos.
WHENEVER YOU’RE READY, HERE ARE TWO WAYS I CAN HELP YOU.
Coaching & Consulting • Get expert, patient help to bash the overwhelm and build excitement using your photos. Become comfortable taking, organizing, and sharing your pictures with family and friends. Create a photo collection that captures your life and provides enjoyment every time you view it.
Photo Management • If you need a photo book, video/montage, or other project done for you, I can help. Overwhelmed by an out of control photo collection that you can’t face? I’m your guy. You’ll get decades of experience as a photographer and graphic artist, with over 12 years as an Apple Photos expert and certified photo manager. Let’s talk.